Anon

Army Raises Maximum Age For Recruits
By Jon R. Anderson
Stars and Stripes
European Edition
March 21, 2005

ARLINGTON, Va. — Battling recruiting and retention shortfalls among its part-time soldiers, the Army is launching a new experimental policy approving the acceptance of not-so-young recruits into the ranks of the Army National Guard and Reserve.

Dubbed a three-year "test," the new policy will bump up the maximum age for new enlistments from 34 years to 39 years, according to an Army announcement.

The policy applies to both men and women joining the military for the first time. The older recruits will be eligible for the same enlistment bonuses and other incentives as younger volunteers, according to the announcement. Those with prior service experience interested in reserves duty remain under existing rules.

"The program will evaluate the feasibility of a permanent change to Army Reserve Component enlistment policy," reads the announcement. The test program begins immediately and will run through September 30, 2008. Set by law, the maximum age for active-duty recruits will remain at less than 35 years old.



The move comes as reserve recruiters are struggling to convince potential recruits to join even as unit leaders are failing to convince enough troops to stay in uniform beyond initial contracts. Hundreds of thousands of part-time citizen soldiers have found themselves facing full-time duty in the combat zones, mostly under two-year mobilization orders. Of the more than 412,000 Guard and Reserve troops who have been activated since Sept. 11, 2001, more than 63,000 have been mobilized twice, according to Pentagon figures.

Nearly half of the forces now in the Middle East and Central Asia come from the reserve components, noted Charles S. Abell, the Pentagon's top personnel officer, in prepared remarks delivered before lawmakers March 16.

With that as backdrop, he wrote, "This will be a very challenging year for recruiting for the reserve components particularly in the Army National Guard and Reserve," which have born the vast majority of combat deployments among reserve forces. Both the Army Guard and Reserve, he wrote "are at high risk of falling short of their recruiting objectives."

To help stem the tide, the Army National Guard is increasing its recruiting force by more than 25 percent, adding 1,400 new recruiters. Meanwhile, the Army Reserve is nearly doubling its recruiting ranks with 734 new recruiters.

The Army's new policy should help their efforts.

"Raising the maximum age for non-prior service enlistment expands the recruiting pool, provides motivated individuals an opportunity to serve, and strengthens the readiness of Reserve units," according to the Army statement announcing the new policy.

All applicants must meet the same eligibility standards, to include passing the same physical standards and medical examination.

"Experience has shown that older recruits who can meet the physical demands of military service generally make excellent Soldiers based on their maturity, motivation, loyalty, and patriotism," reads the announcement.

It's too early to say how much the new policy will help recruiters, but officials are hopeful.

"The impact of the measure on meeting enlistment goals has not been forecast, but it is expected to contribute to the Army's efforts to recruit top-quality individuals," according to the announcement.

ChrisF202

This is not good. The US Army is failing to meet its recruiting quota for the 1st time since May 2000

Anon

This is the slow season, lol.

Ray

Isn't the age a trifle too high to be physically capable of all the hardships that they will face?

Or will these people get rear area jobs? Desk type.

lwarmonger

Nah, most people under the age of 50 can get into shape if they try hard enough. I know the current Lt. Col of my ROTC unit can smoke the best of us, and we're 18-27 years old!

bonehead

What!? The part timers do not consider spending two years in a $hit hole country in the mid east an all expence paid "working vacation"? What is the world coming to?

Ray

lwarmonger

One swallow does not make a summer.

We have a retired General who is 90 or nearabouts and he parachutes regularly whenever there is the occasion. But that doesn't mean that he is the rule.

Also a Lt Col and the trooper have different level of physical work. The trooper has a continuous spectrum of physical work and hence he has to have longer endurance and must be more fit, even though it is expected that all officers are better than their men.

Veni Vidi Vici

I know this has been asked before but will the US institute a draft anytime soon. I know a man who has been in the national guard for 20+ years and he is swearing that we'll be instituting a draft within 4 years. I was wondering what some of the military men thought?

__________________
"Our citizenship in the United States is our national character. Our citizenship in any particular state is only our local distinction. By the latter we are known at home, by the former to the world. Our great title is AMERICANS…" -- Thomas Paine

Officer of Engineers

Only if there's a new ground war in the next 4 years.

__________________
Chimo

Anoop C

Ray sahab, who is this? Thanks.

Veni Vidi Vici

Are we hurting for troops as much as everyone says we are?

Anon

No, and No.

Officer of Engineers

I can understand how your friend would have such a conclusion.




ARMY Magazine


Military Lite: War with Half the Cost
April 2005

By Lt. Col. Craig T. Trebilcock

A conflict that has been raging beneath the surface in the military for two years has finally broken through. It started with the January 13, 2005 press leak of an internal memo to Army leaders from Lt. Gen. James Helmly, Chief, Army Reserve, in which he decried the overuse of his force in current military operations. Reserve component (RC) soldiers (U.S. Army and Marine Corps Reserve and the National Guard) comprise 50 percent of the troops currently serving in Iraq. Gen. Helmly stated in his memo that the force is on the verge of being unable to fulfill its mission, as a reserve force, because of the repeated reliance by DoD upon the RC to fulfill its global requirements.

The leak coincidentally came one day before the Pentagon proposal of a new two-year tour and multiple deployment policy for the RC. Under this policy, the old maximum cap that said a reservist could only be used for a maximum of two years in a given operation would be waived, permitting the Pentagon to place reservists on active duty for years at a time, with only short breaks between combat deployments.

On January 26, 2005, the National Guard Bureau proposed a $15,000 signing bonus to soldiers leaving active duty to entice them into the RC, perhaps because the Guard had missed its recruitment goal in the last quarter of 2004. As one who has served in both the active component (AC) and in the RC, in both peace and wartime, it is clear to me that Gen. Helmly is sounding a strong and appropriate warning that the RC is on the verge of breaking.

Since 9/11, RC forces, which were formerly called to duty primarily for support missions of several months’ duration with the AC, are now being used as if they were the nation’s long-term AC force. Many active and reserve troops are beginning their second tour in Iraq, with some on their third combat tour since 9/11 if they also served in Afghanistan. The end is nowhere in sight. In fact, the policy proposed by the Pentagon reflects the thought process that the Pentagon wants to solve the manpower shortage with more reservists, not more AC troops.

This is a fundamental change of policy in the role of the RC. A nationwide draft would be politically unpalatable and expensive to maintain, so the proposed solution is essentially to draft the reservists who have thus far willingly sacrificed since 9/11 in the nation’s defense.

The simple fact is that if RC units are going to be deployed multiple times for periods of years at a time on a regular basis, people will not join the RC in the first place, and many experienced RC veterans will leave. Those who wanted to serve for multiple years overseas would have joined the AC in the first place, with its greater benefits and resources, and not the RC. The Pentagon, with its $15,000 bonus program, thinks it can patch a fundamentally broken RC manpower policy by throwing a few more dollars at it. They are woefully underestimating the undercurrent of dissatisfaction eating away the foundation of the RC system being generated by the Pentagon’s refusal to expand the AC force to needed levels.

RC servicemembers tend to be slightly older, with personal commitments that can absorb a certain amount of absence in the interests of their military service. Many possess valuable skills from prior military service that can be called upon to supplement the active component in time of war. These citizen-soldiers have chosen to be in the reserve component rather than to remain on active duty for a myriad of reasons, including family issues, career commitments or educational goals. They have chosen to be ready to serve in time of national emergency or military contingency, but not to serve as long-term full-time soldiers. The DoD, however, apparently views them mainly as a raw material that can be bought and used until exhausted, and does not take this basic assumption concerning expectations of service into account.

The basic reason for the attitude disconnect between the RC and the civilian leadership in the Pentagon is that the war on terrorism is currently being run like a civilian business, not as part of a coordinated and well-planned national military strategy. Reservists are being used in such great numbers not because there is no other alternative, but because they are a cheap alternative to more active duty troops.

Personnel costs are the single most expensive item in the defense budget. This is true in any civilian business as well. When one expands the AC Army, one must also expand the support structure and provide all the long-term services and benefits needed to support servicemembers and their families. This all comes at great budgetary strain, beyond the bullets and beans necessary to support the immediate fighting force overseas.

DoD civilian leaders, responsible for budget decisions, have recognized that they get more bang for the buck in bringing RC soldiers onto active duty for long periods of time rather than in expanding the AC force to needed manpower levels. They have created their own straw man to justify this overuse.

The DoD continues to engender its own ongoing troop shortage, from which it must then, with crocodile tears, exclaim that the mobilization and extension of more reservists is the only answer in the war on terrorism. Rather than playing this game of perpetuating its own problem, DoD should face the reality that this country does not have the necessary troops available to fulfill its stated goals and should ask Congress to permanently create the necessary additional AC personnel allocations to sustain the war on terrorism.

When reservists are mobilized, they do not come with the same financial overhead that active duty troops have. Reservists have their own homes, so permanent military family housing is unnecessary. Many of them maintain their own health insurance during deployment since the TriCare health coverage provided to RC families is so unresponsive and unwieldy as to be virtually unusable, or is a major downgrade for many compared to their own coverage. The military does not have to feed, shelter and maintain these troops and their families between deployments, as is the case with active duty troops. Many Reserve families are distant from major military installations and so do not tax the resources of the commissary, PX or other post facilities.

There is also a huge long-term savings since pensions are paid to reservists only when they reach age 60, as opposed to active duty retirees who can collect full pensions as soon as they retire with 20 years of service, some as early as age 38.

These financial lessons are not lost on the civilian leadership of the Pentagon, whose credentials for the job are a life spent in private industry making budget-slashing and cost-cutting decisions to improve the corporate bottom line. Businessmen seek cheap labor to preserve the bottom line, resulting in the outsourcing that plagues our economy. Pentagon decision makers are attempting to slap this same cost-cutting, private business template over an Army at war by using cheap RC soldiers rather than more expensive active duty troops. It has worked in the short-run because of the loyalty and patriotism of those reservists who have served since 9/11. With no end in sight, however, and the potential expansion of RC tours, the cheap labor is beginning to get smart and is leaving.

Active duty troops are also suffering from too many deployments because the force is too small, and they are now hanging up their boots without going into the U.S. Army Reserve or the National Guard, where their experience would likely be tapped again for another return trip to Iraq or Afghanistan.

The $15,000 bonus program will undoubtedly attract some, but, with the Pentagon proposing multiple RC tours, is that sum likely to fix the problem of an AC that is too small?

We have the smartest military people in history, and they can do the math--are more years in Iraq or Afghanistan worth a signing bonus of $21 per day? Not likely.

The military, and more specifically the RC, is not a business based on cold numbers and profit. There is an unwritten covenant between the reservist and his government that has existed since the first farmers assembled on Lexington Green to oppose foreign tyranny. The RC soldier has promised to pledge his life, his career and the well-being of his family to the greater good of this nation. He asks in return only that his service be employed in a just cause and that his willingness to serve not be abused, nor taken for granted.

The current civilian leadership of the military has failed in this second pledge. Every stop-loss and every last-minute extension of service they impose upon soldiers is a breach of faith with the troops and families who have sacrificed so much in the war on terrorism. It is a breach of faith borne of a lack of planning and the reduction of selfless service to a cold calculation of dollars and cents.

The four-year-old who hopes his father makes it home for Christmas and the wife who dreads the appearance of an Army officer at her door with "news" sacrifice in the name of national security while civilian military planners caucus to consider how they can get even more from this willingness to sacrifice. The daily anxieties and sacrifices that our reserve and active duty military families quietly and proudly bear every day are not respected by such shabby, short-sighted treatment.

Half the force serving in Iraq is now composed of RC soldiers. By definition that is not a "reserve" any longer—it is the core of the force. Throughout 2003 and 2004, Congress called for the permanent expansion of at least 30,000 to 40,000 troops on active duty to cover global commitments and was rebuffed by the civilian leadership of the Pentagon. Congress was told that the troops were unnecessary and that there was a temporary "spike" of demand for troops that would go away in the near future. This has not proven true, as unit after RC unit is extended beyond their tour limits in Iraq because of the unavailability of needed replacements. In so doing, the DoD has been burning up the RC and its equipment at a furious pace. Gen. Helmly’s leaked memo points out that there are simply not enough units left to keep up this pace.

Before the war, the one military voice with the courage to point out the errors in the then-existing military planning was Gen. Eric Shinseki, Army Chief of Staff. His now prescient observation in his farewell speech was to "beware the 12 division strategy for a 10 division Army." Gen. Shinseki, who spent more than 30 years of distinguished service in uniform, was rewarded for his candor in calling for more troops by being undermined by Pentagon civilian leaders. A year and a half later, the same leadership who happily bade him farewell are belatedly scrambling to add the two missing AC divisions while bleeding the RC white.

So where does one go to find out the ground truth on these matters? The generals can’t talk about it or they’ll get the Shinseki treatment. So where can one get the ground truth? Ask the troops. I remember an exchange I had with one newly pinned young sergeant in our unit in Iraq. I asked if he was staying with our unit after we got home. He was then on his second deployment in three years, and his honest reply was, "I love the Army, sir, but at this rate I’ll get my bachelor’s degree when I’m 30. I need to get out and start my life." The current planners who turn a deaf ear to the voices of these talented troops do so at their peril, and at the peril of our long-term national defense.

Under the current and proposed Pentagon RC deployment policies, there is no more balance between civilian life and military commitment for the citizen-soldier. A reservist is now a person who attempts to squeeze a few months of civilian life in between multiple-year deployments. The joke in reserve circles is that the recruiting slogan of "two weeks per year" now means that’s how often you will be home. This is not what the system was designed for.

My unit went to war with 145 people and brought everyone home, with two wounded. At our first formation in the reserve center after 90 days leave, 38 persons reported to formation. This was the product of the notice in spring 2004 that civil affairs units that had completed 18 months of service in Afghanistan in 2002 to 2003 were already being prepped for the next Iraq rotation. The Marine Reserve 4th Civil Affairs Group that went to war with us in March 2003 experienced more than 50 percent personnel attrition before they deployed to Iraq for a second time in 2004, as those reservists could not tolerate two combat deployments in the space of one year while trying to preserve their civilian lives. The loss of these skilled troops and their knowledge is a price that will be paid over and over again in the future as green replacements go to war instead of seasoned veterans.

The RC soldiers serving overseas love this country and proudly serve. When told to put on their uniforms and leave their families, they did not ask why, but simply said, "Yes, sir!" Since my return from Iraq, I have seen that the citizens of this country love their soldiers without reservation and believe in their mission. A tear of pride occasions the departure of any community’s Army Reserve or Guard unit. That sense of duty and commitment by both soldiers, families and communities is now being unfairly taken advantage of, however, by the Pentagon leadership who are trying to wage war on the cheap.

It is the abuse of these military families’ selfless sacrifice that will be the beginning of the end for a robust and enthusiastic reserve force unless there is an immediate change of course. Soldiers are not leaving because the conditions during their deployments are austere or the missions dangerous. That is the way of military life. They are leaving because they cannot bear their spouses and children suffering their multiple long-term deployments and seemingly arbitrary extensions, and because they feel that the Pentagon leadership just doesn’t "get it" that there is a covenant to be upheld. Tossing a few thousand dollars in bonus money at the problem does not address the core issues.

In the words of a current military leader, "You go to war with the Army you have ..." That’s right, and somebody needs to start taking care of that current RC force with sound, long-term policies so it is still there tomorrow. We have the smartest, most educated military in history. To think that RC soldiers are not smart enough to vote with their feet if the current draining policies continue is a grave miscalculation. One should never mistake undying loyalty for blind stupidity.

The need to finance a global war on terrorism over the next decade is either going to be paid for by continuing the current policies and breaking the RC or by making the necessary fiscal sacrifices necessary to pay for the full active duty military that is needed to continue this war. No one wants a general draft, which would not create the high-quality, motivated soldiers we need for victory. Personnel are expensive, and the corporate mentality of Pentagon, Inc., however, has elected to forego the hard road of finding sound long-term solutions in favor of burning out the readily available and cheap commodity they have in the short-run—the United States Army and Marine Corps Reserves and the National Guard.

This message is written in accordance with another cornerstone of our reserve military system--the fact that I became a civilian when I took off my active duty desert uniform in March 2004. These opinions are purely my own as a civilian 28 days of the month and should not be attributed in any way as representing those of the military or any military organization in particular.

Somewhere today a young RC soldier stands guard in the heat amidst the suffering and danger that is Iraq. He does not complain. He only hopes that his sacrifice and those of his family will be respected and that the covenant will be renewed and honored.

We, as a country, owe our gratitude to that young troop and his family, and they deserve better than the current "use ‘em and lose ‘em" policy of the Pentagon.

LT. COL. CRAIG TREBILCOCK, U.S. Army Reserve, is a civilian attorney in York, Pa. Since returning from active duty in Iraq in March 2004, he has reverted to individual mobilization augmentee status. In addition to service in Operation Iraqi Freedom, he also had assignments in West Germany and Operation Joint Guard in the Balkans. He is a graduate of the U.S. Army Command and General Staff College.
Copyright © 1999 - 2005 by The Association of the U.S. Army

Shek

This is not a bad thing. Why not give someone that wants to serve their country a chance? They will be required to meet the same standards that everyone else meets. Also, the NG and Reserves have added some great skill sets that you wouldn't get from the all active force (not too many civilian policemen in the active duty army that can assist in training Iraqi Police, not too many practicing engineers that know how to plan construction projects). These aren't experiences that you'll get from 20 yr old reservists/guard members.

Ray

I forget his name. I will ask Lt Gen Pattabhiraman (the Western Army Commander) and then post the same.

In fact, I was trying to insist that Patabhiraman should not jump (he himself is 58 yrs) and he told me if that General can jump regularly, he has to jump too.

He is a South Indian General if I am not mistaken.